Showing Azotea and Outbuildings.
You know the way Americans go about in Europe spending the unit, which is lower than their own, like water, with no sense of value? And how they raise prices wherever they go! Well, they have done the same thing here, and an American woman, who was talking to me the other day, told me it was now beginning to be apparent to them what a mistake they had made, and they bitterly regretted having made the Philippines as expensive as America, but that it was very difficult for them to go back now to the more reasonable scale, for as soon as a Filipino found out you were an American, nothing would move him from American prices. Poor thing, she was very bitter about it, and I felt very sorry for her (as well as rather alarmed for myself), for the sums she was paying in rent and wages to live at all in Iloilo, would have kept her in comfort in London or Paris.
Well, when we had settled on the house, we drove straight to the shop-streets of the town—or rather, street, for there is only one with shops, the principal thoroughfare, called the Calle Real. Some of the shops have quite big, handsome windows of plate glass, with wonderful things displayed in them, but when you get inside you find they are, like the shop window in Browning’s poem, only “astonishing the street,” and beyond the window there is nothing but a large half-empty hall, where a few languid, sallow Eurasians stand trimming their nails behind long, untidy counters. These are the Spanish, Filipino, and German shops; but the Chinese are just the reverse, with no show in the little low window, and the inside a small, poky room, crammed with everything any human being ever invented, and kept by energetic, slant-eyed men who simply won’t let you go without buying something.
The principal shop, however, is the great Store, which is kept by an English firm called Hoskyn & Co., and is said to be the best in the islands, and there we bought elemental necessaries, in the way of a few pieces of furniture, some groceries, china, glass, and so forth, at prices, when translated into shillings, to turn one faint with dismay. It was maddening to think of the lovely things we could have got for the same money at home, nevertheless these were very cheap for the Philippines, for this is a notoriously cheap “store,” which can afford to sell at low prices, as they have such an immense business, even being able to compete with the shops in Manila, where they send all manner of life’s necessaries. Though I am once more reminded of papa’s remark that he never realises what a curse human life has become till he reads through a store list.
When we had done our shopping, we came back to the house and unpacked our new household goods as they came in, hung lamps, and so on, and all that day worked hard at the house. At intervals prospective servants kept dropping in, for servants are secured here in much the same way as houses—people tell other people about the opportunity, and the news flies about in servant-land.
All shapes and sizes of Filipinos loomed on the balcony at intervals, and drifted into the hall and stood watching us till we had time to attend to them. In this country all the doors stand always open for coolness, and there are no bells, and when you go to a house you walk in at the door and sing out for a servant. Some people go so far as to have a hand bell at the top of the stairs, but the whole system seems to me ridiculous, so I have persuaded C—— to invest in a door bell, which he is going to fix to the main door into the hall.
We were unpacking and going about the house, and every now and then we would come upon a silent figure waiting, just waiting, anywhere, leaning up against something, and perfectly indifferent to time or place. This stamped him as a candidate. To each one C—— put first of all the question:
“Can you speak English?”